How to Take a Screenshot on Roku

Even though Roku is packed with features like screen mirroring, customizable themes, smart app support among other hidden features. It lacks a basic feature – taking a screenshot. While you can always use an external capture card, there is, however, a hidden feature that is meant strictly for developers and you’ll have to take some extra steps to capture the Roku display as a screenshot. Let’s see how it works.

Before we begin, there are a few limitations to this process. For instance – you can only take a screenshot when you are on the channel you have sideloaded. You won’t be able to take screenshots of anything that’s not sideloaded.

Take a Screenshot on Roku

To get started, we have to first enable Dev tools on the Roku. To do this grab the Roku remote and press the following keys to reveal a secret menu.

Press Home x3 > Up x2 > Right > Left > Right > Left > Right

Here x means the number of times you need to press that button. For instance, press Home x3 means, press the Home button three times and so on.

You’ll see the following screen with two options; “Enable Installer and Restart“, and “Cancel”. Select the former and set up the server details such as username and password. After finishing up, Roku will prompt you to restart the device, let the Roku device boot up.

Scroll down and you’ll find the actions which you can take from this window. You can inspect a package, upload an app, view profiling data, and of course capture a screenshot. Click the button and it will capture whatever that is being currently displayed on your Roku screen.

Here’s the screenshot of your Roku device. You can now download it to your computer by right-clicking on the image and select save as. The resolution is the same as your Roku native resolution, in our case, it was 1280x720p, JPG for Roku Express 2017.

That was a quick how-to on capturing a screenshot of your Roku device. Surely, it is in no way an ideal solution compared with other devices but it still works.

Similarly, there is no way to record Roku screen unlike Firestick or Android TV where you can use third-party screen recorder apps. The only work to record a screencast on Roku is by using external hardware such as capture card. The one we use is Elgato Game Capture Card HD60 S. It supports 1080p at 60 fps.